The Cavaliers began play as an expansion team in 1970. Coached by Bill Fitch, the Cavs finished their first season with the worst record in the league. The team’s poor season did net them the first overall selection in the 1971 NBA draft, which they used to select guard Austin Carr, the Cavaliers’ first star player.

Cleveland slowly improved, and in the 1975–76 season Fitch guided a team featuring Carr, forward Bobby (Bingo) Smith, and center Nate Thurmond to a 49–33 record and the team’s first division championship. The first play-off series in team history was an Eastern Conference semifinal against the Washington Bullets. Highlighted by three last-second game-winning shots by the Cavs, the series became known as the Miracle of Richfield (for the suburban location of the Coliseum, the team’s home arena from 1974 to 1994). After winning the seven-game series, the Cavaliers advanced to the Eastern Conference finals, where they lost to the Boston Celtics. Cleveland followed its “Miracle” season with two consecutive winning campaigns that each led to play-off appearances, but the Cavs were eliminated in the first round both times. The team then entered into a down period, posting losing records in each season between 1978–79 and 1986–87.

In 1985 Cleveland hired Lenny Wilkens as head coach, and he shaped the Cavs into a defensive-minded team that soon saw success. The Cavs made the play-offs in the 1987–88 season but were eliminated by Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls in the first round of the play-offs. The next year’s postseason series against the Bulls, however, proved to be significantly more memorable. The Cavs finished the 1988–89 regular season with a then-franchise-best 57–25 record. Cleveland’s first-round series against the Bulls extended to a deciding fifth game, which ended when Jordan made a buzzer-beating basket that became known simply as The Shot. The Cavaliers matched their all-time best record during the 1991–92 season, and they defeated the New Jersey Nets and the Boston Celtics in the play-offs to reach the Eastern Conference finals. There, they once again lost to the Bulls.

The Cavs made the play-offs five times in the six seasons between 1992–93 and 1997–98 but advanced past the first round just once, a conference semifinal loss to the Bulls in 1993. The Cavs then posted losing records for six consecutive seasons, including a conference-worst 17–65 mark in 2002–03. That finish resulted in the Cavaliers again gaining the first selection in the NBA draft, which they used to select LeBron James, a much-touted high school star from nearby Akron, Ohio. James guided the team back to the postseason in 2005–06, and one year later the Cavs made their first appearance in the NBA finals, where they were swept by the San Antonio Spurs. In 2008–09 the Cavaliers won 66 games, posting the best record in the NBA that season. However, after sweeping the Detroit Pistons and the Atlanta Hawks in the first two rounds of the play-offs, the Cavs were upset by the Orlando Magic in the Eastern Conference finals. The Cavs again had the NBA’s best record in 2009–10 but were upset in the second round of the play-offs by the Celtics. After that season James signed with the Miami Heat, and the Cavaliers plummeted to the bottom of the NBA in 2010–11.

James returned to the Cavaliers when he became a free agent in July 2014. Led by James and a pair of young All-Stars, point guard Kyrie Irving and power forward Kevin Love, Cleveland posted the second best record in the Eastern Conference during the 2014–15 regular season. Despite the team’s loss of Love to a season-ending injury in Cleveland’s fourth play-off game and a banged-up Irving missing multiple play-off contests, James led the Cavaliers to their second appearance in the NBA finals, but the team ultimately lost to the Golden State Warriors in six games.

In the 2015–16 season the Cavaliers earned a rematch with the Warriors, who had set a league record with 73 wins during the regular season, in the NBA finals. There, the Cavaliers went down three games to one before James and Irving began a stretch of outstanding play. The two led Cleveland to three straight wins while on the brink of elimination—something that had never previously been done in the NBA finals—to capture the franchise’s first NBA championship. The following season the Cavaliers again met the Warriors in the NBA finals, but this time they were defeated by Golden State in a five-game series. In the 2017–18 season the Cavaliers won their fourth consecutive Eastern Conference championship to return to the NBA finals. In yet another showdown with Golden State, the Cavaliers lost to the Warriors in four games.

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